Whatever happens, an individual is little, so the cause is forwarded. I have no more to say to you on the score of affairs, or on any other subject." The second enclosure in the note consisted of some verses, written by him, December 10th, 1820, on seeing the following paragraph in a newspaper : Lady Byron is this year the lady patroness at the annual Charity Ball given at the Town Hall at Hinckley, Leicestershire, and Sir G. Crewe, Bart., the principal steward." These verses are full of strong and indignant feeling, every stanza concluding pointedly with the words "Charity Ball," and the thought that predominates through the whole may be collected from a few of the opening lines: "What matter the pangs of a husband and father, "A Daniel come to judgment, yea, a Daniel : I thank thee, Jew, for teaching me that word.' "In this it is my intent to put the said George's Apotheosis in a Whig point of "What matters — a heart, which though faulty was view, not forgetting the Poet Laureate for feeling, Be driven to excesses which once could appalThat the Sinner should suffer is only fair dealing, his preface and his other demerits. "I am just got to the pass where Saint As the Saint keeps her charity back for the Ball," Peter, hearing that the royal defunct had &c. &c. September- "I have written to you lately, both in prose and verse, at great length, to Paris and London. I presume that Mrs. Moore, or whoever is your Paris deputy, will forward my packets to you in London. "I am setting off for Pisa, if a slight incipient intermittent fever do not prevent me. I fear it is not strong enough to give Murray much chance of realising his thirteens again. I hardly should regret it, I think, provided you raised your price upon him - as what Lady Holderness (my sister's grandmother, a Dutchwoman) used to call Augusta, her Residee Legatoo-so as to provide for us all : : my bones with a splendid and larmovante edition, and you with double what is extractable during my lifetime. "I have a strong presentiment that (bating some out of the way accident) you will survive me. The difference of eight years, or whatever it is, between our ages, is nothing. I do not feel (nor am, indeed, anxious to feel) the principle of life in me tend to longevity. My father and mother died, the one at thirty-five or six, and the other at fortyfive; and Dr. Rush, or somebody else, says that nobody lives long, without having one parent, at least, an old stager. opposed Catholic Emancipation, rises up, and, interrupting Satan's oration, declares he will change places with Cerberus sooner than let him into heaven, while he has the keys thereof. verish and chilly. It is the ague season; "I must go and ride, though rather febut the agues do me rather good than harm. The feel after the fit is as if one had got rid of one's body for good and all. "The gods go with you!- Address to Pisa. Ever yours. "P. S. Since I came back, I feel better, though I stayed out too late for this malaria season, under the thin crescent of a very young moon, and got off my horse to walk in an avenue with a Signora for an hour. thought of you and I 'When at eve thou rovest By the star thou lovest.' But it was not in a romantic mood, as I should have been once; and yet it was a new woman, (that is, new to me,) and, of course, expected to be made love to. But I merely made a few common-place speeches. I feel, as your poor friend Curran said, before his death, a mountain of lead upon my heart,' which I believe to be constitutional, and that nothing will remove it but the same remedy." [See his Life, written by his son. Curran died in October 1817.] LETTER 461. TO MR. MOORE. "October 6. 1821. "By this post I have sent my nightmare to balance the incubus of Southey's impudent anticipation of the Apotheosis of George the Third. I should like you to take a look over it, as I think there are two or three things in it which might please 'our puir hill folk.' "By the last two or three posts I have written to you at length. My ague bows to me every two or three days, but we are not as yet upon intimate speaking terms. I have an intermittent generally every two years, when the climate is favourable (as it is here), but it does me no harm. What I find worse, and cannot get rid of, is the growing depression of my spirits, without sufficient cause. I ride- I am not intemperate in eating or drinking—and my general health is as usual, except a slight ague, which rather does good than not. It must be constitutional; for I know nothing more than usual to depress me to that degree. "How do you manage? I think you told me, at Venice, that your spirits did not keep up without a little claret. I can drink, and bear a good deal of wine (as you may recollect in England); but it don't exhilarateit makes me savage and suspicious, and even quarrelsome. Laudanum has a similar effect; but I can take much of it without any effect at all. The thing that gives me the highest spirits (it seems absurd, but true) is a dose of salts -I mean in the afternoon, after their effect.2 But one can't take them like champagne. "Excuse this old woman's letter; but my lemancholy don't depend upon health, for it is just the same, well or ill, or here or there. "Yours, &c." LETTER 462. TO MR. MURRAY. "Ravenna, October 9. 1821. "You will please to present or convey the enclosed poem to Mr. Moore. I sent him another copy to Paris, but he has probably left that city. "Don't forget to send me my first act of 'Werner' (if Hobhouse can find it amongst my papers)- send it by the post (to Pisa); and also cut out Harriet Lee's German's [Mr. Southey's Vision of Judgment appeared in the year 1821. See Works, p. 512.] 2 It was, no doubt, from a similar experience of its effects that Dryden always took physic when about to write anything of importance. His caricature, Bayes, is accordingly made to say, "When I have a grand design, I ever Tale,' from the Canterbury Tales,' and send it in a letter also. I began that tragedy in 1815. "By the way, you have a good deal of my prose tracts in MS.? Let me have proofs of them all again- I mean the controversial ones, including the last two or three years of time. Another question! - The Epistle of St. Paul, which I translated from the Armenian, for what reason have you kept it back, though you published that stuff which gave rise to the Vampire?' Is it because you are afraid to print any thing in opposition to the cant of the Quarterly about Manicheism? Let me have a proof of that Epistle directly. I am a better Christian than those parsons of yours, though not paid for being so. "SendFaber's Treatise on the Cabiri. "Sainte Croix's Mystères du Paganisme (scarce, perhaps, but to be found, as Mitford refers to his work frequently). "A common Bible, of a good legible print │(bound in russia). I have one; but as it was the last gift of my sister (whom I shall probably never see again), I can only use it carefully, and less frequently, because I like to keep it in good order. Don't forget this, for I am a great reader and admirer of those books, and had read them through and through before I was eight years old, that is to say, the Old Testament, for the New struck me as a task, but the other as a pleasure. I speak as a boy, from the recollected impression of that period at Aberdeen in 1796. 66 Any novels of Scott, or poetry of the same. Ditto of Crabbe, Moore, and the Elect; but none of your curst commonplace trash, — unless something starts up of actual merit, which may very well be, for 'tis time it should." all men. If I come to a friend, and say, Friend, lend me five hundred pounds,' he either does it, or says that he can't or won't; but if I come to Ditto, and say, 'Ditto, I have an excellent house, or horse, or carriage, or MSS., or books, or pictures, or, &c. &c. &c. &c. &c. honestly worth a thousand pounds, you shall have them for five hundred,' what does Ditto say? why, he looks at them, he hums, he ha's, he humbugs, if he can, to get a bargain as cheaply as he can, because it is a bargain. This is in the blood and bone of mankind; and the same man who would lend another a thousand pounds without interest, would not buy a horse of him for half its value if he could help it. It is so there's no denying it; and therefore I will have as much as I can, and you will give as little; and there's an end. All men are intrinsical rascals, and I am only sorry that, not being a dog, I can't bite them. : "Ravenna, October 21. 1821. "I shall be (the gods willing) in Bologna on Saturday next. This is a curious answer to your letter; but I have taken a house in Pisa for the winter, to which all my chattels, furniture, horses, carriages, and live stock are already removed, and I am preparing to follow. "The cause of this removal is, shortly, the exile or proscription of all my friends' relations and connections here into Tuscany, on account of our late politics; and where they go, I accompany them. I merely remained till now to settle some arrangements about my daughter, and to give time for my furniture, &c. to precede me. I have not here a seat or a bed hardly, except some jury chairs, and tables, and a mattress for the week to come. 66 : If you will go on with me to Pisa, I can lodge you for as long as you like; (they write that the house, the Palazzo Lanfranchi, is spacious it is on the Arno ;) and I have four carriages, and as many saddle-horses (such as they are in these parts), with all other conveniences, at your command, as also their owner. If you could do this, we may, at least, cross the Apennines together; or if you are going by another road, we shall meet at Bologna, I hope. I address this to the post-office (as you desire), and you will probably find me at the Albergo di San Marco. If you arrive first, wait till I come up, which will be (barring accidents) on Saturday or Sunday at farthest. "I presume you are alone in your voyages. Moore is in London incog. according to my latest advices from those climes. "It is better than a lustre (five years and six months and some days, more or less) since we met; and, like the man from Tadcaster in the farce (Love laughs at Locksmiths '), whose acquaintances, including the cat and the terrier, who caught a halfpenny in his mouth,' were all gone dead,' but too many of our acquaintances have taken the same path. Lady Melbourne, Grattan, Sheridan, Curran, &c. &c., almost every body of much name of the old school. But so am not I, said the foolish fat scullion,' therefore let us make the most of our remainder. "Let me find two lines from you at 'the hostel or inn.' "Yours ever, &c. "I thought our Magnifico would 'pound you,' if possible. He is trying to 'pound' me, too; but I'll specie the rogue- -or at least, I'll have the odd shillings out of him in keen iambics. you "Your approbation of Sardanapalus' is agreeable, for more reasons than one. Hobhouse is pleased to think as you do of it, and so do some others but the Arimaspian,' whom, like a Gryphon in the wilderness,' I will follow for his gold' (as I exhorted to do before), did or doth disparage it 'stinting me in my sizings.' His notable opinions on the ' Foscari ' and 'Cain' he hath not as yet forwarded; or, at least, I have not yet received them, nor the proofs thereof, though promised by last post. “I see the way that he and his Quarterly people are tending-they want a row with me, and they shall have it. I only regret that I am not in England for the nonce; as, here, it is hardly fair ground for me, isolated and out of the way of prompt rejoinder and information as I am. But, though backed by all the corruption, and infamy, and patronage of their master rogues and slave renegadoes, if they do once rouse me up, "They had better gall the devil, Salisbury.' "I have that for two or three of them, which they had better not move me to put in motion; - and yet, after all, what a fool I am to disquiet myself about such fellows! It was all very well ten or twelve years ago, when I was a 'curled darling,' and minded such things. At present, I rate them at their true value; but, from natural temper and bile, am not able to keep quiet. 'Let me hear from you on your return from Ireland, which ought to be ashamed to see you, after her Brunswick blarney. I am of Longman's opinion, that you should allow your friends to liquidate the Bermuda claim. Why should you throw away the two thousand pounds (of the non-guinea Murray) upon that cursed piece of treacherous inveiglement ? I think you carry the matter a little too far and scrupulously. When we see patriots begging publicly, and know that Grattan received a fortune from his country, I really do not see why a man, in no whit inferior to any or all of them, should shrink from accepting that assistance from his private friends which every tradesman receives from his connections upon much less occasions. For, after all, it was not your debt · it was a piece of swindling against you. to ****, and the 'what noble creatures!! As &c. &c.' it is all very fine and very well, but, till you can persuade me that there is no credit, and no self-applause to be obtained by being of use to a celebrated man, I must retain the same opinion of the human species, which I do of our friend M'. Specie. "Yours ever, &c. "BYRON." 1 I had mentioned to him, with all the praise and gratitude such friendship deserved, some generous offers of aid which, from more than one quarter, I had received at this period, and which, though declined, have been not the less warmly treasured in my recollection. 2" Egli era partico con molto riverescimento da Ravenna, e col pressentimento che la sua partenza da Ravenna ci sarebbe cagione di molti mali. In ogni lettera che egli mi scriveva allora egli mi esprimeva il suo dispiacere di lasciare Ravenna. Se papà è richiamato (mi scriveva egli) io torno in quel istante a Ravenna, e se è richiamato CHAPTER XLVII. 1821. DEPARTURE FROM RAVENNA. -MODE OF LIFE THERE SKETCHED BY MADAME GUICCIOLI. ROGERS'S POETICAL RECORD OF HIS MEETING WITH LORD BYRON AT BOLOGNA. - INTERVIEW WITH LORD CLARE. LORD BYRON CROSSES THE APENNINES WITH ROGERS. VISIT TO THE FLORENCE GALLERY.- - TITIAN'S VENUS. -THE PITTI PALACE. ARRIVAL AT PISA. LETTERS TO MURRAY AND MOORE.OUTCRY AGAINST CAIN.-FIRST PART OF HEAVEN AND EARTH, A MYSTERY, COMPLETED. — MR. TAAFFE AND HIS COMMENTARY ON DANTE. COMMUNICATION FROM MR. SHEPHERD. -LORD BYRON'S ANSWER. THE LANFRANCHI PALACE. ORIGIN OF THE GIAOUR STORY. IN the month of August, Madame Guiccioli superintending the preparations at the Casa had joined her father at Pisa, and was now spacious palaces of that city, Lanfranchi, - one of the most ancient and for the reception of her noble friend. and with a presentiment that his departure venna," says this lady", "with great regret, 66 He left Ra would be the forerunner of a thousand evils to us. In every letter he then wrote to me, he expressed his displeasure at this step. 'If your father should be recalled,' he said, is recalled previous to my departure, I remain." I immediately return to Ravenna; and if he In this hope he delayed his journey for several months; but, at last, no longer having any expectation of our immediate return, he wrote to me, saying—' I set out most unwillingly, foreseeing the most evil results for all of you, and principally for yourself. I say no more, but you will see.' And in another letter he says, 'I leave Ravenna so unwillingly, and with such a persuasion on my mind that my departure will lead from one misery to another, each greater than the for prima della mia partenza, io non parto.' In questa speranza egli differì varii mesi a partire. Ma, finalmente, non potendo più sperare il nostro ritorno prossimo, egli mi scriveva lo parto molto mal volontieri prevedendo dei mali assai grandi per voi altri e massime per voi ; altro non dico, lo vedrete.' E in un altra lettera, 'lo lascio Ravenna così mal volontieri, e così persuaso che la mia partenza non può che condurre da un male ad un altro più grande che non ho cuore di scrivere altro in questo punto.' Egli mi scriveva allora sempre in Italiano e trascrivo le sue precise parole. -ma come quei suoi pressentimenti si verificarono poi in appresso! mer, that I have not the heart to utter another word on the subject. He always wrote to me at that time in Italian, and I transcribe his exact words. How entirely were these presentiments verified by the event!" After describing his mode of life while at Ravenna, the lady thus proceeds: 66 This sort of simple life he led until the fatal day of his departure for Greece, and the few variations he made from it may be said to have arisen solely from the greater or smaller number of occasions which were offered him of doing good, and from the generous actions he was continually performing, Many families (in Ravenna principally) owed to him the few prosperous days they ever enjoyed. His arrival in that town was spoken of as a piece of public good fortune, and his departure as a public calamity; and this is the life which many attempted to asperse as that of a libertine. But the world must at last learn how, with so good and generous a heart, Lord Byron, susceptible, it is true, of the most energetic passions, yet, at the same time, of the sublimest and most pure, and rendering homage in his acts to every virtue-how he, I say, could afford such scope to malice and to calumny. Circumstances, and also, probably, an eccentricity of disposition, (which, nevertheless, had its origin in a virtuous feeling, an excessive abhorrence for hypocrisy and affectation,) contributed, perhaps, to cloud the splendour of his exalted nature in the opinion of many. But you will well know how to analyse these contradictions in a manner worthy of your noble friend and of yourself, and you will prove that the goodness of his heart was not inferior to the grandeur of his genius." At Bologna, according to the appointment made between them, Lord Byron and Mr. Rogers met; and the record which this latter gentleman has, in his Poem on Italy, preserved of their meeting, conveys so vivid a picture of the poet at this period, with, at the same time, so just and feeling a tribute to his memory, that, narrowed as my limits are now becoming, I cannot refrain from giving the sketch entire. "BOLOGNA. "'T was night; the noise and bustle of the day Were o'er. The mountebank no longer wrought Miraculous cures - he and his stage were gone; And he who, when the crisis of his tale 1 The leaf that contains the original of this extract I have unluckily mislaid. 2" See the Cries of Bologna, as drawn by Annibal Caracci. He was of very humble origin; and, to correct his brother's vanity, once sent him a portrait of their father, the tailor, threading his needle." Came, and all stood breathless with hope and fear, "Much had pass'd Since last we parted; and those five short years- "Well I remember how the golden sun The gondolier's, in a Patrician House "He had just left that Place 3" The principal gondolier, il fante di poppa, was almost always in the confidence of his master, and employed on occasions that required judgment and address." 4"Adrianum mare. CICERO." 5 "See the Prophecy of Dante." 6" See the tale as told by Boccaccio and Dryden." |